British husband guilty of strangling wife to be with his Aussie boyfriend

By STORM GIFFORD

Dec 04, 2018 | 7:50 PM

Mitesh Patel injected his wife Jessica with insulin and strangled her with a bag. (Facebook)

A heartless British pharmacist was convicted of strangling his wife to death in May to begin a new life in Australia with his boyfriend.

Jurors needed less than three hours to find Mitesh Patel guilty of the premeditated murder of his 34-year-old wife, Jessica, with a plastic bag after spending five years planning her killing.

Advertisement

His goal was to start a family with his boyfriend, Amit Patel, in Sydney with his wife’s frozen embryos and $2 million in life insurance, reported BBC News.

Court testimony revealed Jessica had been aware that her husband had been cruising the social phone app Grindr in search of casual sex with men.

During the three-week trial, shocking evidence was presented that Patel subdued his wife with a shot of insulin before strangling her at their home in Linthorpe, northern England. Forensics showed he had carried out online research about strangulation and the effects of insulin.

He then staged a robbery at their home, ransacking the rooms to make it appear as if Jessica had interrupted a burglar.

Patel’s deception was uncovered after cops examined his and his wife’s phones on that day.

Prosecutors claim his motivation was to flee his stringent Hindu upbringing and start anew with Amit Patel.

“I should have been honest with myself and I should not have married Jess,” testified Patel during his trial. “I cannot explain how I felt. It was the fear of being exposed as an Asian gay man, that was one thing and the other was that I was not going to let Jess down. I had married Jess and all her dreams were going to come to a crashing end.”

Family members were at a loss to make sense of her death.

“(Jessica) had simple dreams,” read a family statement. “All she ever wanted was to fall in love, have a family of her own and live happily ever after.”